White Wolf
by 8belles
Summary: Post CA:CW, current within Black Panther. Shuri is deeply touched by Bucky's trauma after Steve leaves him in Wakanda. A story of how she came to help him and give him the name, White Wolf. (written in cannon with the comic Infinity Wars: Prelude by Marvel and the MCU).
1. Chapter 1

Shuri sat, curled up like a cat on a lab stool knees to her chest, chin resting on her knee, studying the man below the frosty glass canopy. His body was covered in a light frost, tubes attached at his one arm to feed him, computer cables attached to the mechanical stump on his left. The swirling purple and gold vibranium tribal art of the walls reflected off the cryochamber and gave the man within a deathly pallor although he was not in danger of dying.

T'Challa approached cat-like to his sister, hands clasped reverently behind his back. Steve Rogers had departed several days ago, entrusting the mental care of his best friend to the brilliant Wakanda princess. He stood next to her as she pondered the former Winter Soldier.

"I do no need my tech to see he is so wounded." Shuri said quietly with a touch of sadness. A frown disturbed her pristine forehead.

"This is true." T'Challa agreed solemnly.

"Why." She whispered, the frown becoming a crackle of angry lightening in her ebony eyes.

T'Challa looked at her sister questioningly.

She did not return the gaze but kept hers fixed on the glass dome. "The world, brother. The world so full of hate. This man's pain started so long ago. It has only compounded through time. Why is the world so?"

The king felt the kindling of anger as well because his precious sister was having her faith in humanity shaken again after the death of their father. Shuri was far from naïve however. She had exposure to the outside world as their father made sure they read and studied history, current events and spoke to many worldly scholars. That education and exposure didn't help to cool his temper. He felt like a father seeing their child's innocence being taken away before their time. Fighting the urge to shield her from the truth, he replied, "Shuri, the world is just so large, we cannot throw our arms around all of it. I do not know why humans treat each other so badly, but you, sister, you have a power to bring good. Use that power to turn back the darkness."

Finally, she looked at him and T'Challa saw a swirl of emotions; disgust, anger but most of all hope. "I will, brother."

T'Challa smiled and turned away from his genius sister to leave her with the frozen Bucky Barnes.

* * *

"You are a mess, Sargent Barnes." Shuri chirped at the unmoving Bucky, a bowl of breakfast in her hand, still in her morning clothes. She pulled up a chair to a workstation and with her empty hand tapped out commands on the keyboard.

The screen doled out a flurry of information about her patient as she scanned it quickly with expert eyes. "My dear man… let's increase your iron and manganese. I think some more fluids would help as well." Keys clicked and made it so.

Rising from the chair, she chewed her food, staring contemplatively once again through the glass at him asleep.

 _Okoye, examining one of her knives, teased her gently of having a crush. "I think you like this colonizer."_

" _Don't be ridiculous!"_

" _I'm not being so. You stare at him like a love-sick puppy. Even your brother doesn't look at Nakia like that!" Okoye laughed re-sheathing the blade._

 _Setting her jaw, Shuri marched over to Okoye leaning casually on a lab table, arms folded over her chest, and grabbed her wrist. The Dora Milaje was surprised by the forwardness of the princess but allowed herself to be led to the Bucky's side._

" _I am … I am drawn to his suffering. His pain. Look at him. He is like a great tragedy even in cryosleep!" Shuri explained vehemently._

 _Okoye peered through the frigid glass for the first time at the sleeping amputee. His face was not at peace or rest, like one with a normal heart. There was a tension, a terror pinched in his closed eyes and set in his jaw. Suddenly, she felt a keen compassion towards the fellow soldier and regretted teasing Shuri._

" _Highness, I am sorry. You are correct. He wears his soul on his face." Okoye apologized._

" _Yes, he does." she looked at the man on the table, voice softening but firm, "And I will fix him."_

The memory faded away as Shuri spooned another mouthful and turned her eyes away from Bucky towards a stack of notebooks on the table. Steve had left them with the Wakandans in case there was a source of healing or information for them to use. The books were worn with the turning of pages countless times. Gazing at the stack, she could feel the melancholy pouring off them even without reading a word.

She set her bowl down and reached for the first one, a notebook with a photoshopped picture of Steve Rogers on it.

" _I remember taking that from a kid." Barnes told her before he went under, after escaping Siberia and Tony Stark._

" _You did? Why?"_

" _I was still in New York and… well, I just felt like I needed to write some stuff down."_

" _So, you stole it." She smiled at him mischievously not knowing the depth of his hurt._

 _Barnes blushed and looked away self-consciously, rubbing a hand through the scruff of his beard._

 _Shuri sensed his embarrassment, "I'm sorry. I have no right to ask."_

" _No. It's ok. I was not… I'm still not in my right mind." Barnes replied, looking at the notebook in her hands, "Those are all the Steve memories I have. Mostly of our childhood."_

Shuri glanced down at the tattered cover.

" _The one with the octopus is all my bad memories. I doubt you'd want to read those." Barnes continued, his voice dropping._

 _She glanced at the other books on the table. "I think it is important to gather all the data available to help you."_

 _Bucky looked up at her like a man cursed, "Then do yourself a favor. Don't read them alone."_

Shuri didn't take his advice.

* * *

A/N- I reference my own story, "The Notebook" which was written pre-CA:CW but pretty close in cannon to the movie. I'll do my best to stay within cannon of the MCU. 8belles


	2. Chapter 2

_Steve hadn't done the wash in weeks. I walked in and here he was sitting alone, in the kitchen of his family apartment, piles of clothes, trash and dirty dishes. There was a stale smell of rubbish, unwashed bodies and I could hear him wheezing lightly._

 _He looked at me like he didn't even recognize me. "Steve. What in Sam Hill are you doing?"_

 _Rogers just stared at me, empty. His mom had been dead one week to the day. "You need some help?" I sat down next to him in his rumpled clothes that look like he had slept in several nights._

" _No." was his hollow reply. He was skinnier than ever._

" _You wanna talk about it?"_

" _No."_

 _I remember being suddenly mad at him. How could he just sit and stew after all his momma did to raise him right and take care of him after his father died? I knew he was mad about the Army not taking him too, but that was no excuse for him to be a sad lump on the floor._

" _You lazy sonofabitch."_

 _Steve looked at me then, a hint of fire._

" _You heard me. Lazy good for nothing." I stood up, towering over him._

" _Stop"_

" _Make me." I glared, "Your momma would be so ashamed of you right now. Look at yourself."_

" _Leave her outta this." Steve growled, eyes dark._

" _I'm not gonna. Get up, you lazy dog." I stated, "Clean this place up."_

 _Without a blink of an eye, he launched himself at me with a scream. I was easily still two heads taller and at least 50 pounds heavier, so I did not try to stop him because if I did, I knew I'd break a bone. I just let him pound on me, his bony fists barely making any damage on me. After a moment of blind rage, his asthma caught up with him and the arm swinging slowed to nothing. He fell forward into me, sobbing, barely able to catch his breath._

 _I stood there for him and put an arm around one side to hold him up as his knees shook violently, threatening to collapse. I don't think I'd ever heard a man make those sad sounds before, until I went to war in Germany. Then I heard those sounds too much. The screaming; the loss of all you hold dear in a single tortuous sound. That was how Steve sounded that day and I'll never forget it. I think I made that sound when I fell from the train or maybe I heard it from Steve again as he yelled my name. It's burned into my brain._

 _That was the day I told Steve, I was coming to live with him. He obviously needed me._

Shuri looked up from the notebook of Bucky's words to regard at him lying there in the cold. She knew that sound of loss and pain. She made it herself when the news of her father's death reached Wakanda.


	3. Chapter 3

**Day after Bucky went back into deep freeze**

Steve sat at the wood table, running a fingernail along the un-sanded grain. He watched how the flow of the wood looked so much like water and the craftsman who made the table allowed the tree to tell the story of what kind of existence it lived through the growth rings. The grooves were subtle, some thick some thin; just like his life. There were plenty of thin years but then they got better. His fingertip found a knot in the wood. The scar divided the grain of the board as an ironic image of his current state, separated from Bucky once again.

Rogers sighed heavily with melancholy.

Shuri entered the room holding plates of something steaming hot and smelling delicious. "Captain Rogers. Are you hungry? I understand you have not eaten anything today." Her tone was light, friendly and young. There was a sparkle of humor in her eyes.

Looking up with a wan smile, as he didn't want to be rude, he replied, "Thank you, your Highness. I'm fine."

Shuri set the plate down before Steve and then sat opposite him with a firm expression. "Firstly, Captain, it is Shuri. Not 'Your Highness' or princess or any nonsense like that." She chided gently, "But we have a rule here in Wankada, and that is that there are no adventures before one is properly fed."

Rogers smelled the exotic spices and it looked vaguely like his favorite Irish stew from his childhood. His stomach rumbled in anticipation and his appetite would always be his downfall. "I would not want to be rude, Your- I mean Shuri. Thank you. Please, just Steve. I'm not a Captain anymore."

Shuri laughed lightly, her eyes sparkling with intelligence, "You should see how T'Challa eats before a mission! Like … how do you say it, a pig?"

Steve had to chuckle at that comment, imagining the lithe King tucking into a pile of food like a ravenous teen aged boy. "I can taste why. This is wonderful cooking."

Shuri wiped her mouth, "You are welcome. It's my mother's recipe."

Rogers froze in amazement from the flavors rolling over his tongue. The empty stomach beckoned for more. "You made this? Yourself?"

A playful frown creased her brows, "My goodness. Do you think I can do nothing around here? Besides being a genius, my mother taught me all my cooking skills. When I was a younger girl, T'Challa would beg me to make his favorite sweets when mother had taken them away because he was naughty."

Swallowing, Steve kept his mouth shut and averted his eyes, not wanting to offend further.

"Relax, Steve. I am jesting with you. I know you are not used to royalty who are not pampered hand and foot." Her pearly smile was reassuring. The cables in his shoulders relaxed a fraction. As she watched him eat, she could see the stress of Bucky's choice weighing heavily upon him. "Do you mind if I ask you some questions about Sargent Barnes?"

Reflexively, his chewing stopped, and his jaws tightened, eyes still downcast.

"No."

"If it is troubling to you, I will not."

"S'ok."

Shuri regarded the war-torn soldier for a moment, her keenly observant eyes picking up the smallest nuances of movement and discomfort. Perhaps her fact finding should go in a different direction.

"I've read a lot about you over the years. You have been through a very unique ordeal."

A sarcastic smirk caught his lips, "'Ordeal'. That's one way of putting it."

Shuri put her fork down and regarded him carefully, "I do not mean that in a flippant way, Steve. I study A.I. systems and try to make them more intuitive. The hardest thing I try to program into them is resilience, compassion and understanding. You can make a robot do whatever you want it to, but you can't give machines a purpose. They can have a directive, it's not the same." Rogers shifted in his chair as she continued, "You _have_ purpose. You possess all those qualities and although I knew you were chosen for the Supersoldier program, I now truly understand why."

Rogers looked up at her like her words were cool water on burns. Echoes of Erskine floated up and that reassured him that somehow, no matter how difficult it was to keep his compass, that someone else saw in him what Erskine and Bucky did so long ago.

"Thanks."

"I mean that. You are a true man of honor and loyalty. You see the good in people, the real person beyond their pretenses."

Steve was almost blushing in flattery.

"And that is why I need you to tell me everything you know about Sargent Barnes, so I can dig behind the Hydra madness and find him to bring him back."

Bucky's name and the word Hydra snapped Rogers back from his temporary comfort zone. His eyes hardened.

"Are you comfortable doing so?"

Steve swallowed and looked across the room. He heard glass crunching under his boot and the smell of sulfur and old wood in the air. Peggy's voice whispered, "He damn well thought you must be worth it."

"Yes. I am."


	4. Chapter 4

Shuri looked at her notes she gathered from Steve's interview and the notebooks spread carefully around her. Systematically over weeks in her computer lab, she began to enter the data from both sources into her algorithm using key words, events and summaries of memories. Her supercomputer inserted sensations, and backgrounds in the proper contexts and timing seamlessly.

Slowly, page by painful page, Bucky Barnes's past became a computer program; his previous consciousness had been recreated in virtual reality like some twenty first century news reel.

It was deeply late as she sat back in front of her huge virtual screen, tiredly admiring her last work. Her eyes felt strained as she rubbed the temples of her skull in exhaustion. On playback was Bucky's memories of Steve and he as children. She saw Winifred, his mother, and his dad with his three sisters. A warm smile pulled her lips up into a happy grin as tiny Steve entered the picture and they played in their tiny Brooklyn tenement. Such a different time from her experience, yet the similar truths remained; the love of family and friends.

Waving a hand in the air to fast forward, she saw the men as teens and the struggles of poverty, the loss of Bucky's dad and the Depression. Swallowing, she saw the suffering they endured yet kept their character intact knowing and believing that someday, it would go their way. She witnessed Steve's obsession to join the military and Bucky repudiating him every time just because he didn't want his friend to be hurt.

With a careful hand, she waved on to where Hydra captured Bucky and the 107th. Schmidt, the Red Skull, appeared briefly, as did Armin Zola. Stopping the footage, she picked up a virtual knife, ready to excise the brainwashing, which in her framework was bad code.

Reaching literally into the framework with the glowing virtual blade, Shuri began to cut around the image of Schimidt's face and work towards Zola like snipping photos for a scrapbook.

"I would not do that if I were you, princess." came the sibilant _hiss_ of Swiss accented English.

Shuri stopped, looking around her. Did she hear that or was it her fatigued imagination?

"You heard me correctly, your Highness." Armin Zola's voice reached around her into the room much like a large snake.

"You cannot be real. You are in _my_ framework. You are nothing but a ghost in the machine. I can unwrite you." Shuri challenged him, feeling her blood pressure rise in defiance.

"Certainly, a woman of your intelligence and skill should recognize another brilliant mind and know that it is not that easy." Armin's voice came from the face she was about to remove from Bucky's virtual recall.

Her face contorted into a snarl, "You are not brilliant. You are nothing more than a hideous monster and you will not torment this man any longer!"

"That is too bad you feel that way, princess. I feel you and I could accomplish much together." Armin almost looked sad from the frozen visage on the screen, "But thank you for resurrecting me from the digital dustbin and recreating me in the network."

Shuri felt something approach from behind and realized it was one of her lab robot's arms reaching out to choke her. Spinning on her heel, she let go of the virtual knife and grabbed real steel to face off against her own creations. With a loud war cry, she lunged at the one or two armed robots who had various attachments on their arms, hacking them into pieces. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw code scrolling across her screens; Armin was writing himself back into life!

"NO!" she yelled, pushing debris at more of her robotic assistants, trying to reach the main power switches. Zola's one-dimensional photo image began to move, blink and stretch as if he had been asleep for a long while.

"Kill her." Armin commanded any robotic device in the room.

Thinking quickly, she realized one mannequin had a Panther suit on it, the prototype necklace version for her brother. She had disabled its communications to the network weeks ago. It was not vulnerable to Armin. Slipping the gold chest piece over her head, she blinked and was enveloped in vibranium.

The virtual Armin shimmered, trying to assess what had just happened. With a fierce scream, she bounded nimbly over the mutinous technology and went straight for her virtual display screen across the room where she had been working. Extending her claws, she reached _into_ the screen, grabbing Armin Zola's image in her hands. Her fingers wrapped around his neck in a vise as her panther hooded face came close to his shimmering _in-screen_ visage. "You should have died a long time ago sonofabitch. Wakanda forever!" With a final look of terror, she snapped his virtual neck, killing the code of Zola.

There was an explosion of electricity shorting everything out. The vibranium in the mine thrummed in harmony with the blast.

"Shuri!" T'Challa and Okoye came thundering down the staircase.

Laying on the floor, Shuri groaned in pain. Aches asserted themselves and she wondered why the world was behind a screen with T'Challa and Okoye hovering worriedly over her, then she recalled the Panther suit. Blinking, she retracted the suit back into the necklace in a purple shimmer. "I'm fine." She sat up with the help of her brother. Looking around, she saw the destruction of her lab done by the recreation of the Hydra super scientist trying to resurrect himself in the modern world.

"What happened?!" Okoye asked amazed, surveying the damage. Sparks spit out from various areas as dying robotics flailed helplessly. Smoke curled up from scorched wiring and insulation. Computer screens were shattered into hundreds of pieces. The only thing that wasn't broken was the tribal art on the walls that pulsed with vibraniums' power.

Shuri got up from the floor, ignoring the bruises, a furious look on her face. "Look what he did!"

"Who?" T'Challa asked.

"That damn Hydra bastard, Armin Zola." Shuri growled turning slowly to see the destruction. A small Roomba-like robot resumed some life and tried vainly to clean up the mess.

"But he's dead." T'Challa recalled.

"Well, now he is." Shuri smiled cockily at him, "But apparently I'm too good at recreating A.I. so I inadvertently recreated a shell of him from Steve and Bucky's notes that let him reanimate himself enough get into the code of…." Her eyes went wide in understanding. Without explanation, she sprinted off.

T'Challa and Okoye chased after, not seeing what Shuri did.

Several floors down, Bucky's cryochamber lay open. Shuri slid to a stop, breath heaving in her chest.

Using every fiber of her being, she listened for any sounds or indications that the Winter Soldier was up and about. Blinking, she pulled the Panther suit down again. Her augmented sight helped in the low light of the room. "Wait." She whispered to T'Challa and Okoye who had caught up.

"What is going on?" Okoye whispered back fiercely from the doorway.

"Trust me."

Moving stealthily around the room, Shuri used every ounce of her focus to find where Bucky had gone. Catching a glimpse of someone moving, she turned to face it. "Bucky?"

A form in the shadows shuddered.

"Bucky?"

"32557038, Sargent James Buchanan Barnes." A hoarse whisper came from the shadow. T'Challa and Okoye tensed to pounce. Shuri held up a hand behind her to warn them off.

"James?"

"32557038, Sargent James Buchanan Barnes." The voice intensified, and a wince ran over him.

Shuri blinked removing the Panther mask and approached cautiously. "Bucky."

He looked up at her, his pupils huge in his blue eyes, stubble over his face gave him a disheveled appearance. "Steve? You're a girl now?"

Shuri smiled gently, "No, Sargent. I am not Steve. I am Shuri. You are in Wakanda. Did you have a bad dream?" She glanced down and noticed the blood running from his right arm. He tore out his IV's.

"I did." His mind was not clear from the stasis drugs.

"Do you want to tell me what you dreamed of?"

"Not really. It was bad."

"I can help you with that."

"Are you a doctor? You're dressed funny if you're a doctor."

She smiled gently again, "Yes. I'm a special kind of doctor. Come with me, Bucky. Let's make you comfortable."

Tremors ran the length of him. Shuri could feel that he was still very chilled from the cryochamber and was extremely surprised he was alert enough to talk to her.

Standing up with shaking legs, Bucky held onto Shuri for support as T'Challa came in to support his other side. Leading him to the cryochamber, they sat him down on the edge of the bed. Bucky's eyes became confused and afraid. "Bucky. I want to tell you something." Shuri said quietly, "Captain. Steve. Rogers. Best. Friend. Brooklyn."

Barnes's face relaxed and a silly smile splayed across his lips. He nodded stupidly as if drunk and swung his legs up onto the bed. Shuri pushed his hair out of his eyes like she would a small child as he closed them. Carefully, she reinserted his IV's and closed the glass lid. Using her tech enabled bracelet, she did a quick diagnostic on the cryochamber to make sure that Zola hadn't reached down and contaminated it with his meddling. It passed inspection, so she punched some keys and it sealed and chilled again, refreezing the former assassin.

She retracted the rest of the suit and looked at her brother and their good friend. "What was that?" T'Challa asked.

Shuri looked exhausted but there was the ever-present twinkle in her eye, "I gave him some of my own code words. Those words only bring him peace and happiness. They override the Hydra programming until I can excise that from his mind. I thought it would be a good insurance policy against a … regression."

T'Challa nodded in approval. Okoye smiled a grim smile.

"Let's go to bed. I'm tired." Shuri said moving past them.

"That Panther suit looks good on you, sister."

Shuri looked over her shoulder with a feisty grin, "I know. You better watch out."

Both Okoye and T'Challa laughed as they took the elevator back up to the surface leaving Bucky in his peace codeword induced sleep.


	5. Chapter 5

Shuri was no fool to let any remote chance that Zola still lived as any code in her computer arrays. Systematically, she digitally vaccinated her networks to eradicate any trace of Hydra contagion. This took time away from rehabilitating Bucky, which bothered her. She gave her word to Steve and it felt like she was cheating on her promise, even if she had no choice.

It took several days to clean up her lab physically, repairing the robots she had destroyed with her own hands, which made her both angry and happy because as she fixed things, she had sparks of inspiration. Always keeping her tablet handy, she jotted down her ideas with each vision.

Once she was finished, she stood before her large virtual screen again, her glowing virtual knife in hand and T'Challa behind her.

Before them was where Shuri had left off, the images of the Red Skull and Armin in the framework of Bucky's digitally reconstructed brain.

"So, you say that the short fat one began to speak?" T'Challa commented.

"Yes. That one is Zola. Mastermind of all of Hydra's work." Shuri growled while frowning.

"I wonder if Grandfather knew of him." T'Challa asked, "When my ring vibrated in time with the metal of his arm, that confirmed his old arm was vibranium. I wonder where Hydra got it from."

"An excellent question." Shuri posited, looking thoughtful, "Wakanda is like a termite mound though. So many tunnels and exits. After all, look what Howard Stark built with the vibranium he had."

T'Challa sighed thinking of Rogers and his complicated situation, "At least that shield was for good."

"True." She poised the glowing gold blade over the images of the Skull and Zola. With a stab, she began to excise their memories from the virtual creation of Bucky's mind. This time, no blinking or talking dead memories came back to life as they peeled away, as if made of paper, to crumble into tiny twinkling pixels on the floor.

"Looks like you have this well in hand, sister."

"When do I not?"

"Hmm. I'll leave you to your work."

Shuri smiled to herself and kept cutting.


	6. Chapter 6

Shuri sat before the boys dressed in bright robes, small white dots brilliant against their ebony skin. Giggles erupted spontaneously between them as they chatted in the goofy way young children often do. Smiling broadly herself, she joked lightly with them as she gazed out across the lake just beyond and the tawny grass surrounding them swaying peacefully in the breeze. Feeling the warm sun on her shoulders helped to ease that persistent stress since Killmonger had been defeated and her brother returned to the throne.

"Shuri!" a boy called to get her attention from her daydreaming.

"What Uuka?"

"Tell us… again about the broken white man!" He had a gap-toothed grin and dancing eyes. The other children clamored in unison too.

Shuri rolled her own and regretted using that phrase out loud around the children. It seemed like an eternity since she has rebuilt the memories of Bucky Barnes from scratch using his notebooks and Steve's recollections. It was a such a struggle to remove the horrors of 70 years of pain not because Hydra was complex and cunning, but because they were so cruel and inhuman.

She had seen enough pain in his lifetime to last all of hers, easily.

"Alright." There was a squeal of happiness round the circle. "Once, long ago, there was a man and his best friend. They were inseparable, true brothers but not brothers."

"What does … insep… inseper…" the youngest child asked.

"Inseparable?" Shuri pronounced for him, "It means nothing can break their friendship. Not even death!"

"He is a Black Panther?" another child blurted, eyes huge and round, knowing the history of how all the Panthers make the journey to the Land Beyond to visit with the Elders who have gone before. The cat goddess Bast made this possible, ever Wakandan child knew this.

"No, sweet one. He is a white wolf."

"What is a white wolf?" the first asked.

"Hush and let her tell the story!" the oldest, Uuka barked. The others fell into line quickly only plucking at their robes to quell their fidgeting.

"As I was saying, he and his best friend had different life paths through many difficult and violent obstacles. There are people of the world who are not always kind and seek power over all else no matter who is in the way and will stop at nothing to get it." Several of the children's faces frowned in disapproval.

"Is that how he lost his arm? Is he still in pain? He sometimes looks… sad." Uuka asked thoughtfully , having observed Shuri when she brought Bucky to this remote location away from the palace after the coup attempt.

"Yes, he was hurt many times, including the original loss of his arm." Shuri said quietly, her eyes dark, "But what hurt him most of all, was he was separated from his best friend."

"But you said they were inseparable." another child added, confused.

Laughing, Shuri replied, "Yes, but I meant that their hearts and minds were not able to be separated. Are you right now away from your parents? Are you separated from them?"

"Yes."

"Are you inseparable from them in your heart even though you are not with them physically?"

"Yes."

"Understand?"

"I think so."

"Right then. So, his best friend, Steve Rogers and he were separated by these their two different life paths. But then, they were reunited because their hearts and minds remembered each other! But they needed our help to make Sargent Barnes's heart all right again because very cruel people did very horrible things to him. That is why he is here."

"But why do you call him White Wolf?"

Shuri gazed back at the hut, in which Bucky lay, still unconscious. "He is loyal to his friends beyond his own life. He is strong, and he is cunning. He is kind to his allies and merciful to his enemies." The happy memories of the Howling Commandos came into her mind from reading and listening to Steve. Their families growing up and sharing their homes with each other warmed her heart.

"So, he is like T'Challa?" Uuka asked.

"In some ways yes. But because of his past, he cannot be the same as our King." Shuri stood up from among the children, who also clambered their feet excitedly. "But all of you must remember, he is our friend. He is a good man."

Several faces beamed at her with anticipation. "I think it is time for our White Wolf to wake up and see Wakanda, don't you?"

Three boys pelted off before the rest could blink.

Bucky heard children. They were laughing. It was such a foreign sound, it took his brain several minutes to process what the sound was, so long had it been since hearing it.

Besides the laughing, he felt something he had not in a long time. He felt peace.

Opening his eyes, he heard a woman's voice chide the children away from him, as he looked up at three smiling face, giggling at him. Rising, the children ran away out the door of the hut.

He followed, the texture of the grass warm on his feet and the sun brilliant in the sky. A serene blue lake was before him and the lady, who he recognized as Shuri, princess of Wakanda, stood at the shore line.

If she had not been there, he would have sworn he _finally_ died and had gone to paradise.

"Sargent Barnes." Shuri said warmly.

Quietly, he turned and looked at her, "Call me Bucky." Calmly, he returned his gaze to the lake.

She nodded in acknowledgement, seeing already the relief in his posture, on his face, and in his tone of voice. In her chest she was proud of herself that she could use her talents to help such a worthy soul, who never asked for any of his fate but bore it dutifully.

They stood together looking out over the lake, silently, while children played.

* * *

A/N- So, I looked up Xhosa names for children and used that for this story. The movie "Black Panther" uses Xhosa as the primary language of the film, so I felt that detail was important. I forget if it was two or three boys who woke up Bucky (Shame on me, I've only seen the film once). Thank you for the readership. Wakanda Forever…. And No SPOILERS on INFINITY WARS!


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